New Edward Snowden interview excerpts released

New excerpts of an interview with US leaker Edward Snowden filmed before he
fled Hong Kong for Russia have been released.

9:54PM BST 08 Jul 2013

Major US corporations allow the country's National Security Agency (NSA) "direct access to the back ends of all of the systems that you use to communicate," according to former NSA systems analyst, Edward Snowden.

Snowden, who made the allegations in Hong Kong to the Guardian newspaper in June before fleeing to Russia, alleged companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft "get together" with the NSA to provide information.

"They give the NSA direct access, that they don't need to oversee, so they can't be held liable for it," he claimed.

Since the first part of Snowden's video was released, the NSA has stated that it only targets foreign traffic, and Snowden's latest disclosures claim "the NSA doesn't limit itself to foreign intelligence, it collects all communications that transit the United States."

Snowden accused NSA chief General Keith Alexander of lying to the US Congress by saying the agency could not determine how many US communications are gathered, something Snowden claimed that an NSA "global auditing system," Boundless Informant, does.